4 - 10 January 2001

Investing for the wireless future

Intercomp was recently appointed the authorised Nokia distributor in Malta. Raphael Micallef Trigona, Operations Director, explains to Blanche Gatt why Intercomp chose to diversify in this direction.

Before cable TV and Jay Leno first brought the Nokia tune to the public, few Maltese people would have recognised it. In fact, it is doubtful whether, in the early-nineties, anyone outside the still-minuscule community of mobile phone users would even have recognised the brand-name Nokia. But Jay Leno certainly did his bit for the growing Finnish mobile phone producer; by the time the first Nokia phones appeared on the local market, everyone knew and connected the tune to the manufacturer.
Now, just over half a decade later, as well as several advertising campaigns down the line, Nokia is undisputed world leader in the mobile phone arena, boasting over 30 per cent of the worldwide market. Along with users throughout the world, thousands of Malta’s 110,000 mobile phone subscribers own Nokia models, upgrading according to trend and fashion along with the rest.
But what few people seemed to realise up to recently was that although Nokia phones were readily available locally, there was no official representative of the Finnish company here until Intercomp was appointed just a month ago. Intercomp itself is well known as the official distributor of Hewlett Packard and Dell, both leading US computer brands, and focuses its core business on the distribution, installation and support services for the extensive range of Hewlett Packard and Dell products, as well as software development for accounting and payroll packages. I recently spoke to Intercomp’s Director of Operations, Raphael Micallef Trigona, who explained why the company took this new direction, and where they are hoping it will lead them.
“At the end of 1999,” Raphael said, “we felt that we should look into the possibility of diversifying into the mobile communications sphere. It was becoming more and more apparent that communications, IT and internet are all converging, but as yet no-one can foretell which sector is going to be the prevalent one, which product – mobile phone, laptop or PC, or television set – is going to dominate.”
“This convergence is an exciting development that Intercomp is now poised to be a part of,” he added. “From the PC side, we already have laptops and palm-held PCs which are being rolled out with ever-increasing functionality such as the capability for wireless access to the internet.
“On the other hand, with mobile phones, models are being produced with much more intelligence and features ranging from games to infra-red links to PCs and even to fully-fledged word-processing capabilities. So, each of these initially very different products now boast many of the same functions.
“Besides, e-commerce is now evolving into m-commerce, which is particularly interesting because it allows people with portable devices, hand-held computers or mobile phones, to be able to increasingly interact over the internet or phone lines regardless of location.”
As a computer-based company, Intercomp felt this convergence could be viewed either as a threat or an opportunity. “We felt Intercomp should look at it as an opportunity,” said Raphael, “and having taken a decision to branch out that was endorsed by our Board of Directors, we started looking at the mobile market in Malta. We saw that this was an extremely disorganised market, with trading and importation coming in from all directions, often via non-official channels. This meant that the opportunity existed for us to represent a strong brand and launch it using our wholesale and service expertise.”
Winning the Nokia brand was definitely a triumph; the brand is a world-leader with a reputation for trendy innovation and heavy investment in research and development that ensures it maintains its leading edge market position.
“We wanted to go for a top-notch brand,” said Raphael, “and when we looked around we realised that Nokia was not represented in Malta yet. This was probably because up to now Nokia viewed the Malta market as dominated by Vodafone as a monopoly player and therefore charging monopolistic tariffs and not allowing enough market penetration for mobile phones. In fact, it was the liberalisation of the local mobile operator market that really convinced Nokia that it was interesting to invest in Malta as a market and Intercomp as a brand player.”
One of Nokia’s greatest strengths lies in the fact that the company’s main focus is mobile phones. 90 per cent of their revenue comes from mobile phones, as opposed to most other producers who manufacture phones as a side-line.
First contact was made with Nokia last Spring; by mid-November a contract had been signed and Intercomp’s first consignment of Nokia phones arrived during the first week of December.
“It was a perfect month to start – we were able to take advantage of the Christmas action. It required a tremendous effort during the last part of November to actually set up an authorised Nokia distribution network of over 30 companies and outlets. And there is still a lot of work to be done to develop the channel properly, but we were overwhelmed by the positive response we received to the eight new Nokia models we imported – the 3310’s for example proved so popular we were totally sold out between consignments.”
During 2001 Intercomp will set up a Club Nokia Service Point, with all the investment in HR and technical infrastructure this will require. Once this is up and running they will be authorised to carry out warranty and other repairs without having to ship defective devices out of the country.
Of course, those Nokia sets that have been bought from unauthorised dealers will not be able to take advantage of warranty offers from Intercomp: “By means of serial numbers,” explained Raphael, “we are able to identify which phones on the market have been imported by Intercomp, when and how long the warranty is valid, as well as whether the warranty will be respected in the first place.”
“When we launched our models,” continued Raphael, “we found out how cut-throat the market was. We did suspect this because of the situation with parallel trade, but we were surprised by just how many models destined for the Asian market landed on our shores, many illegally. Of course, we can tell instantly; if the manual is not in English it’s a dead give-away, for example, and this leads to a situation where many Nokia phone owners may well turn out to be disappointed with the after-sales service as they will have no-one to refer to in case of problems.
“This type of free-for-all can only end up harming the Nokia brand reputation, and I strongly believe the situation should change. In the meantime we can only advise people to ensure they are covered by buying an officially imported Nokia phone, with all the relevant warranties and assurances this carries.”
As technological developments rapidly pave the way for the imminent wireless age, mobile phones and mobile operators across the globe are racing to be in a position to offer any new services.
“Here in Malta,” elaborated Raphael, “the near future will see operators upgrading the infrastructure of their networks to allow for WAP, which should happen in April 2001. GSM will be upgraded to GPRS, which will allow a much faster data transfer speed, as well as charging on a per second usage while the user is actually downloading or transferring data, and not for the entire duration of the call.
“This will make mobile internet service much more usable; people won’t have to wait so long, or pay so much and this will help fuel demand for m-commerce services. The more long-term future is even more exciting when we consider the services that will become available when the UMTS structures have been implemented together with 3G (third generation) phones that are just being developed.”
Mobility, communication, commerce and entertainment will be the drivers in this evolution – but it’s not time to throw out your old TV set yet.